Sacrelicious's Blog - 2old2play

In which we take the plunge!

I just flew back from CT this morning, and upon arriving in Shittsburgh for the last time, got a call from my wife saying that she had been offered the job she was really hoping to get! I was also able to secure a part-time job that will help pay the bills, but will also leave me plenty of quality time for web-dev work.

We have both given our 2-weeks notice at work, and at our apt, so it's on like Donkey Kong! I'm a little worried that our current apt will make us pay rent for Sept. (that's when our lease is up), which would really suck, having to pay double rent for a month... but oh well, I guess when you are making omlettes...

So now I am back in the pitts till the beginning of Sept, my wife starts work on Thursday so she will be looking for an apt, while I pack up our life.

Thanks for your words of encouragement, and hopefully our apts won't make us bend over!

New England here we come!!

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In which I risk it all...

The short version: My wife and I are moving to CT, after living in the same apt and doing the same jobs for 3.5yrs since we got married, we don't really know where we are going to live, and are pretty much freaking out.

The longer version: I have hated my current job for quite a while now, but haven't done anything about it. Over the summer I started talking to one of my friends from college about moving up to Hartford, CT (he already lives there and has a steady job) to start our own web-design/advertising company. (BTW, I grew up just outside Boston, so moving back to New England is a pretty big draw for me.) Anyway, we didn't really think it would work, but I asked my wife to take a look at jobs in CT she was qualified for, and she found a couple open positions that paid enough more than her current position to make up for the increased cost of living. Now my wife is a teacher, so as you can imagine, things start to happen around the beginning of Sept., and she only got around to applying last week (she has instructed me to clarify: not because she is lazy, we just didn't get serious until Aug, and we had multiple weddings that put stuff off too.), so we figured if nothing happened by this Monday, it would be too late for her to give two weeks notice at her current school. Monday came and went without hearing anything, so we resigned ourselves to another year in Shits---I mean Pittsburgh. Tuesday morning, she gets a call from the place with the best salary/benefits and they want to interview her Friday (tomorrow) to start training on Monday. So we are driving up at 5am tomorrow morning, then if she gets the job (it seems pretty definite at this point), she will stay with some friends up there for 2 weeks, while I fly back, and work/pack the house for 2 weeks until the end of Aug. I have most likely acquired a part time job, which will leave me set time during the week to work on websites/find clients, which I think will be awesome, cause that is what I really want to do with my life. (If you or someone you know needs a kick-ass website, holler at me!)

So, things seem to be aligning themselves for us (or perhaps I should say God is aligning them for us), but we don't really know where we are going to live yet... we are super poor right now, so we have to find a place that doesn't require 1st/last month's rent up front, we do have all weekend to find a place, and also if Kim (that would be my wife) gets this job, she will be up there for 2 weeks working and looking for a place. (If you live in CT and haven't read my thread in Off-Topic, this is where you come in!)

I think that about sums it up, Kim is being great about moving somewhat blind, and we are both apprehensive but excited about this change, and really think it will really work out for the best! Thanks in advance for your prayers (if you lean that way ) and support, and maybe this year I can come to the East-Coast LAN!

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In which I am pointless...

Really, really pointless... anyway.

What is interesting about the following sentence (besides the fact it doesn't make much sense), and can you come up with a better example?
"Oh, I see you are a bee!"

Also, is there a longer abbreviation than: gov't for government?

I obviously got waaaaayyyy too much sleep over the holidays!

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In which something pisses me off...

Let me first preface this by saying that I do not smoke, and don't really like being anywhere near cigarette smoke, but with that being said, I think it is a travesty what the government/courts has done to the cigarette companies. There are numerous examples of the crap a "jury of their peers" has put cigarette companies though, one specific one is an ad, made by Phillip Morris touting how on their website you can find tips and tools to keep your kids from smoking (and how to quit yourself). What other type of company in these United States is forced to spend its own money to try to convince people to not buy its own product!? Now you might say to yourself, "but Sac! Smoking is addictive and causes cancer and all sorts of other narsty things to happen to your body!" That may be the case, I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, however, if it were really about protecting the poor, stupid American people from the greedy tobacco companies, the government would just make cigarettes illegal and be done with it. Instead, the politicians just get dollar signs in their eyes whenever they think about "big tobacco," both from lawsuits and taxes, so they do everything to milk as much money from their fellow American capitalists as they can, without actually going as far as making their product illegal and putting them out of business.

Well, that's the end of my rant, feel free to flame me if your entire family died of lung cancer or emphysema (like my grandfather), and I'll catch you on the flip side!

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In which may appear an embarrassing admission

I love the self-checkout lines at grocery stores... it appeals to my nerd side: "I get to use a computer at the grocery store? Cool!" I also don't have to talk to anybody, I can just motor though the store with my head down, only acknowledging other humans when hot soccer moms come into view (sadly, a rare occasion in Pittsburgh, it's more likely to be skanky rednecks), and your purchases are completely anonymous, which is perhaps my favorite part... say you have to buy Preparation H and feminine products.... would you rather hand those items to cashier ("please GOD don't let her be a hot chick") or scan them yourself in relative anonymity, shove them into your bag and scamper out of the store without anyone being the wiser. It is even better now that they have changed the way the things work, they used to announce what you were purchasing, ie "Please move your... bananas... to the belt," but now they just announce the price and say "move your item," which means you won't have to deal with embarrassing situations where the computer is yelling, "Please move your.... ASS CREAM.... to the belt," to everyone from dairy to produce.

On a similar note, and here is the embarrassing admission, yes... I did actually need that Prep.H... and let me tell you, I am bitter about it.... I am NOT supposed to need that shit until I am 40 and have a good job, so I can be sitting in the bathroom thinking "well, i have a swollen and itchy rectum that requires me to finger myself, but at least I am pulling down $200k a year and have 4 lovely kids to mow the lawn," ... not when I am fucking 26 and unemployed. *sigh* Anyone want to hire an experienced Flash programmer?

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Perhaps not the last...

Some of you may have been saying to yourselves while reading my last post, "Sac, why would you say it is your last blog?" Well, it is the same reason I never made a website for myself when that was all the rage, and have never done myspace or any of that crap.
My life is boring.
I am bored by my everyday life, I go to work (sometimes), I play Xbox and I eat food... sure things happen that I enjoy, but no one really cares about those things either. So, gentle reader, I do not blog becasue if I find my life boring, why should I foist it on the innocent readers of my blog? Just remember, I do it all for the kids. Perhaps I will make up a secret identity, 00Sac, who will have great adventures (and find a job ) to regale everone with.

On a completely different note, if you have a 360 and enjoy shooters, I wouldn't write Chromehounds off until you have given it a try. I read a bunch of very mediocre reviews, but it was the only game available at Blockbuster, and I enjoyed it quite a bit more than I thought I would. True, your mech does move quite slowly, but in the SP they usually put the enemies close to your starting position, so you don't have to run halfway across the map to find some action. In the MP it is even less of a problem, because while you are moving into position, you are communicating with your team, getting status reports from your commander, coordinating COMBAS towers etc., so your time before meeting the enemy isn't just a waste of time, as the reviews made it out to be. Anyway, if you had any interest in this game, give it a shot, find a good team, spend an hour obsessively crafting your mech, and try it out!

Hope you enjoyed my rediculously incoherent ramblings, Sac out!

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First (and perhaps last?) Blog Posting

I knew you all were just dying for a bit of Sac blogitude, if you are interested in the GTA clone Saints Row, keep reading... if not, skip to the end for a glimpse into the life of the Sac!

Someone recorded themselves playing the Saints Row demo and put it up at [url=http://www.xboxyde.com/news_3184_en.html]Xboxyde[/url] ("More than 30 minutes..." is the one I watched), and they have both a direct download version and a bit torrent version... my impressions of the game:

-Holy crap it looks like GTA! Im sure part of that is because GTA is such a genre defining game, but the way your guy runs, the mini-map and the glowing spots you collect missions on look *exactly* like GTA.
-The character customization looks really detailed, maybe not quite the number of sliders as Oblivion, but definitely as much as any sports game. The developers also put the character designer to use when populating the game world, everybody looks different, different outfits, fat people, skinny people, buff people... looks like it will be a lot of fun making my fat-ass, somewhat effeminate, pasty white gang-banger! ;)
-The graphics look really tight, its a little hard to tell textures and stuff from the video, but the car deformations look neat, and the lighting, character detail and everything look solid.
-They also implemented a nice wayfinding feature: when you have a mission, (or you can just bring up the map and slap down a marker), litte moving arrows show up on your mini-map showing you which streets to go down... part of the charm of GTA was that after playing for a number of hours, you knew the city like your hometown, and just knew how to get anywhere, but for just starting out, the wayfinding system should help you get around.
-It looks like they decided to go with an easier targeting system, your recticule just stays in the middle of the screen as you move your guy around. I never played GTA on the console, but Ive heard many complaints about that targeting system, and it looks very easy to use here. It also looks like you can shoot behind yourself without turning around.
-There is A LOT of swearing!

Those are my impressions of the demo, if anyone has pre-ordered it and has thus been graced with the demo, please feel free to disagree, or add your observations!

Welcome back WoW gamers! ;)

I am going in to a temp agency this morning to take their clerical work test: typing speed, Word, Excel, that shit... "why" do you ask? Is it because I love menial drudgery in front of a radiation spewing monitor? Not so good sir (or maam), it is because I have been (mostly) without a job going on 3 weeks now, and getting close to the bottom of the barrel (or to the top of the Credit Cards). I was hoping to take this opportunity to change careers and move into what I really want to do.... SING ON BROADWAY!!! ... erm... actually, I would love to be a webdesigner for an advertising agency... but that didnt pan out, and neither did my fallback of getting another IT job. So now my wife is working 2 jobs, and I am trying to find one that doesnt involve cleaning shit off of floors. Sometimes life sucks.

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